2/7 - 50 pages in and I'm enjoying the book more than I did the movie. I've only seen it once, but I distinctly remember laughing when the shark ate Chrissie Watkins. The look of her zipping back and forth in the water, supposedly being dragged by the shark was so fake looking I couldn't help but find it hilarious. I knew it was supposed to be horrifying and terrifying, but as a 15-20 year old (I can't remember exactly how old I was, but it was somewhere around that age) it just looked to me like she was on a pair of out of control water skis just below the surface of the water. I guess it didn't help that I saw a behind the scenes, 'making of' documentary before I saw the movie. So I had the knowledge of how difficult the shark was to control (and what it looked like when you could see the whole thing) and the amount of time and money that was spent perfecting it to Spielberg's exacting standards colouring my view of how scary the shark was. Plus I saw it after I saw movies like Terminator 2, Alien, and The Exorcist. After seeing those movies a fake-looking shark whose mouth wouldn't work properly right up until the day of filming didn't effect me that much. I think this'll be a fast 3.5 star read for me (my edition used a large type font which means I'm just flying through the pages). To be continued...

SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS AHEAD

3/7 - Ellen cheating on her husband with Hooper was a distastefully salacious subplot that was completely unnecessary. It didn't add anything to the story, in fact it took away from it. It made Ellen a cheater, as well as a woman who is more interested in her social status (or lack thereof) than in her husband or children (in relation to children, you choose your path and you stick to it, it's not like making a career change because you never were really happy selling life insurance). It made Brody an angry, jealous, slightly violent brute who could no longer hold the attention of his wife. In fact I can't think of a single character I actually liked, they all had flaws that were too close to the surface, they weren't balanced out by their good sides. I was quite upset by some of Quint's actions during the scenes Brody, Quint, and Hooper spent trying to catch the shark. Slitting open a shark's belly, allowing the shark's guts to fall out into the water, then pushing the still living shark back into the water and watching it eat its own guts over and over again as they keep falling back out of the gaping hole. That is just horrible and made Quint into a bit of a demon, I found some poetic justice in the fact that the shark took him down with it. Ellen and Quint kept the stars at three, just average, definitely not above.

From the opening pages of the book when the couple cant get it on because one of them gets eaten by a shark (a much better excuse than I have a headache!) you know that youre in for a thrill ride. Benchley had storytelling in his bones; hes the grandson of famous author, Robert Benchley. The story is well known. A shark terrorizes a seaside town and has to be eliminated. This is a great example of a thriller, because the threat is not understood at first, but as the book goes on, the characters realize what theyre up against and the threat becomes personal as the family and friends of the main characters are threatened directly by the shark. As the main characters go out on the water to confront the shark, the odds tilt in favor of the shark and the main characters have to battle back to the last pages.
The film stars Richard Dreyfuss and its hard to beat in terms of the scares per minute. Skip the many sequels which are not up to par with the original. Be sure to watch the movie and read the book, but do it from a landlocked state. You wont want to be near the water for a while.